⏱ ~4 min reading
Grandpa had an old bench under an apple tree in his yard. The bench was rough, with fluffy bark on uneven boards, but comfortable—Sofiya liked to sit on it with her legs under her.
Grandpa was sitting nearby. In his hands he held a cigarette holder, which he hadn't smoked from for a long time - he was just rolling it in his fingers like a pen. Grandpa liked to roll something in his fingers when he was thinking.
"Tell me about when you were little," Sofiyka asked.
— Again?
— One more time about the foal.
Grandpa smiled. His smile was special—his lips barely moved, only the wrinkles around his eyes deepened, and somewhere in his eyes a light lit up.
— Well, okay. There lived a horse in our village. A mare. Her name was Zirka. Because she had a white spot on her forehead — as if someone had glued a star on it. And then in the spring Zirka brought a foal.
— What did it look like?
"Small, dark, with the same white spot. Only his was a little crooked—as if the star hadn't burned out on one side.".
"What did you call him?"
"I called her Sparkle. Because she jumped like a spark. She couldn't hold still. When she went out into the yard, she would run until she was a pillar of dust.".
Sofiyka listened. Grandpa told me about how Sparkle only allowed himself to be touched. How Sparkle would come to the fence in the evenings and wait for Grandpa—then little Mykola—to bring a piece of bread. How Sparkle disappeared one day, and everyone thought he had been stolen, but he simply got lost behind the pond and returned a week later—thin but alive.
Sofiyka listened and thought. She thought that these stories lived only in Grandpa. That no one else knew about Sparkle. That if Grandpa was gone—and she knew that someday, even if not soon, Grandpa would be gone, because that's how life is—Sparkle would disappear too. For real.
Sofiyka didn't say it out loud. She just came the next day with a small notebook. The notebook was blue checked, with a white swan on the cover.
“What is this?” asked Grandpa.
"This is for you. That is, for us. I'll take notes.".
— What?
— Your stories. So that they don't get lost.
Grandpa was silent for a long time. He looked at the apple tree. Then at Sofiyka. Then at the apple tree again.
"Okay," he said. "Where do we start?"
— From Sparkle.
Grandpa started. Sofiyka wrote. She wrote slowly, because she wasn't very fast yet. Sometimes Grandpa slowed down — he waited for her to catch up. Sometimes he repeated.
An hour later, the first story was written down. Two pages long. Sofiyka read it aloud to check if everything was correct.
"Somewhere like that. Except that Star wasn't a redhead—she was a sable.".
— What is a bulana?
— Yellow. With a black mane.
Sophie corrected me.
Every week — on Saturday — Sofiyka came. We sat on a bench. Grandpa told stories. Sofiyka wrote. We wrote down one story at a time.
About how grandfather fell into a pit of clay as a child and was pulled out by a neighbor boy. About how great-grandmother baked Easter cakes for Easter — and the whole house smelled of it for a week. About how grandfather saw a train for the first time and thought it was a big black snake. About how his father — Sofia's great-grandfather — repaired the radio and listened to distant stations at night.
When the notebook ran out, Sofiyka bought a second one. In a green checkered pattern. With a fox on the cover.
One day my mother came to visit and saw it.
"What's that on you, swallow?"
"These are Grandpa's stories. I'm writing them down.".
Mom opened it. She read the first one — about Sparkle. She read the second one — about the pit with clay. She didn't finish reading the third one — Mom's eyes got wet.
“Can I come with you next time?” she asked. “I didn’t know a lot of things.”.
The grandfather looked at his daughter and granddaughter. His smile deepened, reaching all the way to his eyes.
— It is possible.
From that day on, the three of them sat on the bench. Sofiyka wrote. Grandpa told stories. Mom listened and sometimes quietly asked: "But you didn't tell me this. Why?"«
"Because you didn't ask," said Grandpa.
That summer, Sofiyka wrote out three notebooks. She put them all in one box from under her boots. She kept the box on the top shelf in her room, where the books were.
Once her grandfather whispered in her ear:
"You know, Sofiyka. You're not just writing stories. You're building me a house—one that I'll live in, even when I'm gone.".
Sofiyka didn't quite understand then. She understood later — many years later. But she never lost the box of notebooks.
💡 The past is also home.